The BBC‘s Victoria Derbyshire left former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson rattled at the farmers’ protest in Westminster. She suggested he was attending because he bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax:
“So it’s not about you, it’s not about your farm and the fact you bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax?”@vicderbyshire speaks to Jeremy Clarkson at the farmers’ protest in Westminster where thousands of farmers are protesting the government’s inheritance tax plans. pic.twitter.com/9KwoiEbImz
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) November 19, 2024
Labour’s changes for farmers
In the budget, Labour effectively introduced inheritance tax of 20% on farm estates worth more than £1m. But tax relief for married couples means most will only pay the tax on those worth more than £2m.
And it’s actually the case that for more than half of the estates impacted (56%), the individual hadn’t received any trading income from agriculture in the five years before their death, as the Canary previously reported. And only 10% received an average of more than £10,000 per year in agricultural income.
Jeremy Clarkson said:
I’m here to support farmers
But Derbyshire queried:
So it’s not about you and the fact that you bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax?
And Clarkson laughably said:
Classic BBC!
No ‘classic BBC’ is successive studies that show it’s Conservative-leaning and anti-left. One major content analysis found Tory cabinet members have double the BBC appearances of their Labour counterparts, while accounting for who’s in power. That’s despite Tory figures as senior as David Cameron shielding offshore trusts from transparency laws and benefiting from his father’s own offshore trust.
Then, Clarkson admitted he would further avoid the inheritance tax changes:
People like me will simply put it in a trust
So Derbyshire pointed out:
One of the reasons Rachel Reeves said she brought this in was to stop wealthy people using it as a way to [avoid tax]
Jeremy Clarkson isn’t representative of farmers, but when you get to the dukes its astonishing
Guy Shrubsole is author of the book the Lie of the Land, where he notes that less than 1% of the population owns more than half of England’s land. Speaking on LBC, he pointed out:
You’ve got your Jeremy Clarksons, who own 1,000 acres. That’s bigger than 90% of English farms… then… you’ve got 20 dukes who own a million acres of Britain. A million acres.
Additionally, 355 wealthy landowners including such aristocrats are benefiting from a different, obscure tax loophole that Labour hasn’t closed. The “tax-exempt heritage assets scheme” enables these landowners to avoid inheritance tax through registering property and land as so-called ‘heritage assets’.
The qualification for this status is loose: you must ‘look after the land’ and make it ‘available for the public to view’. Freedom of information requests from Shrubsole revealed that rich landowners avoid at least £68m from the scheme.
So, Derbyshire was right to skewer Jeremy Clarkson. His protestations aren’t about farmers. They’re about him and his tax-avoiding rich mates.
Featured image via BBC Newsnight – X
